Watch: Mumbai Journalists Protest Rape

Journalists protest in Mumbai Aug, 23, 2013 against the rape of a young photojournalist in the city.

Indian journalists staged a silent protest in the heart of Mumbai Friday, following the rape of a 22-year-old woman in an abandoned textile mill in central Mumbai Thursday evening.

The demonstrators, including representatives of The Press Club Mumbai, the Television Journalist Association, Bombay News Photographers Association, turned out with placards and black bands over their mouths and around their arms.

The journalists were there both to protest and to report on the demonstration for their publications and news channels.

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“If we don’t keep saying that we want them to do something, if we don’t keep protesting, if we don’t keep saying we want change, who will ever give us change,” said Jerry Pinto, a freelance journalist.

The woman who was raped was a photojournalist intern for an English-language magazine in Mumbai. She was on assignment with a male colleague shooting pictures of an abandoned mill in the Mahalaxmi area in the south of the city when five men tied up the man she was with and raped her for one-and-a-half hours, according to police. The case has echoes of the gang rape of a 23-year-old student in Delhi in December who was traveling home with her male companion when they were attacked on a bus. The woman’s injuries were so severe she later died in hospital. The trials of four men and a juvenile in that case are ongoing.

Those at the demonstration Friday afternoon said they were protesting not just because of the victim’s profession but because in their opinion Mumbai has become unsafe for women.
Women journalists who turned up at the protest said they feel fearful as such a violent act took place in midst of a busy commercial part of Mumbai in the early evening. With its large and growing population, it is rare to find a deserted place within the municipal limits of the city, which is India’s most populated.

“We have won our liberty at great cost, are we going to lose it again?” said Jeroo Mulla, the former head of the social communications media department at Sophia Shree Basant Kumar Somani Polytechnic in South Mumbai. It is important not to think that because women are susceptible to violence and rape, they should not be given chances in professions that require later working hours, she added.

The incident is also likely to bring into focus the entry of women into journalism, especially photojournalism. Women began to enter news photography in India in serious numbers only a few years back. Most photojournalists have to deal with unruly crowds, aggressive security personnel and sometimes police at some point during their work.

“The question in every household will be whether to allow their women into this field,” said Rajanish Kakade, a photojournalist with an international wire and photo agency. “For that the government needs to take care of security,” he added.

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